Beyond the Multiplex

Things start to seem slightly off during the train journey east: An icky middle-aged businessman puts the moves on Josh, whose response seems a bit too vehement, and Bratislava turns out to be a depressing burg whose streets are dominated by skinhead thugs and bands of homeless children. (The movie was mostly shot in the neighboring Czech Republic.) But the hostel turns out to be just as Alex advertised, maybe a little too much so.

When the trio checks in, the cute girl at the desk tells them that the rooms aren't private, and they'll have roommates. "Roommates!" the alpha stud Paxton smirks. "That's gay." Oh, no, it isn't. Their roommates turn out to be Natalya (Barbara Nedeljáková) and Svetlana (Jana Kaderabková), a pair of bodacious hotties who immediately invite our heroes to join them in the clothing-highly-optional coed sauna. Every decent Slovakian hostel has one, of course.

So Paxton and Josh enjoy a smashing evening with their nubile companions, or at least Paxton does. (Whether Josh is actually interested in the company of women is open to debate.) But wait a sec -- where's Oli? He went off with some other chick, but now he won't answer his cell phone. And what's with that weird picture he sent, where his face looks really unhappy and he's someplace really dark?

As those of us sitting in the audience know already, Oli has gone someplace very bad indeed, and Paxton and Josh are going to learn about it firsthand, very soon. As Roth puts it, "Hostel" is a "slow-burn horror film" that takes an abrupt left turn into savagery at about the halfway mark. The babealicious Bratislava hostel is the bait that lures victims into a sort of medieval torture chamber for hire, a murder-brothel where rich men of all nations can unleash their most bloodthirsty impulses.

Roth explains that the idea for "Hostel" came from a Thai Web site he was shown by Harry Knowles, the legendary Internet geek behind Ain't It Cool News, which promised something similar. "It doesn't matter if it was real or fake," Roth says. "Somebody was bored enough to dream it up. The fact is, there are guys out there who are bored with doing drugs, bored with screwing hookers. Nothing touches them anymore, so they start looking for the ultimate high. Paying to kill someone, to torture them -- that's the ultimate form of prostitution."

But what's made "Hostel" instantly notorious is not the philosophical questions it raises, such as they are, but the intense and horrifying nature of its violence. You could argue, in fact, that Roth is playing to precisely the kind of jadedness he says he's criticizing. In the last few years horror directors have all but abandoned mood, atmosphere and suggestion for full-on graphic bloodshed, and Roth, a protégé of Quentin Tarantino and one of the most talented filmmakers in the genre, is leading the way.

He has no apologies. "This is a really, really violent and bloody film," he says. "And if people don't want to see that, they absolutely shouldn't go. I think there is absolutely an audience that wants their horror horrific. They don't want it safe. I'm not trying to make movies that appeal to everyone, and I think the advertising makes that clear. This is stuff that really horrifies and disturbs me."

Roth made "Hostel" independently, on a relatively low budget of $4 million, even though he could have made any number of big-money studio deals after the success of his debut feature, "Cabin Fever." This was precisely, he says, so no one could tell him he had to cut his most gruesome scenes of violence. I tell him the truth about my own reaction, which was that I admired the humor, the tremendous craftsmanship and even the shock value of "Hostel," but found the Grand Guignol torture scenes excessive. (Unless you're a hardcore fan of Italian, Spanish and Japanese gore flicks, you've never seen anything like this.)

"I think I have the exact level of violence I need," Roth responds. "If people are going to have sex and meet horrible deaths, I want to see that. I mean, if I started off in minute one with nonstop gore and violence, that would be way too much. But audiences are kind of numb. They're bored of the same stuff. I want people to leave the theater saying, 'That was really, really violent and fucked-up. That really disturbed me.'"

Gruesome cinema performs a cathartic function in stressful times, Roth suggests. "You know, we live in really crazy, fucked-up times, and usually it's not OK to just freak out. With a horror movie like this -- a crazy, intense bloodbath -- you can walk into a room with a bunch of strangers and just scream and go nuts. The screenings for this have been amazing: People shrieking, people running out, people screaming things at the screen. And then after 90 minutes you get to leave, and everybody's OK."

In fact, as Roth observes, people who stigmatize violent entertainment are missing the most obvious point, which even the dumbest member of the audience realizes -- it isn't real. "People say, my movie, it's really violent," he says. "But you know what? It's theater. It's a magic trick. It's all done with corn syrup and fake blood. All my actors are still alive. What's worse, my movie or Dick Cheney? Nobody actually died in my movie. People actually die because of Dick Cheney, and he doesn't allow you to see it."

"Hostel" opens nationally on Jan. 6.

Next page: "I can't imagine hell. But the camps were real"